Author: DBenson

Victims were mostly women and children celebrating Kurdish new year, say officials

At least 71 people have drowned after a ferry sank in the Tigris River near Mosul, Iraq.

Col Hussam Khalil, the head of the Civil Defense Corps in the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh, said the incident occurred on Thursday while scores of people – mostly women and children – were celebrating Nowruz, which marks the Kurdish new year and the arrival of spring.

A Canadian cabinet minister who had quit in protest over the government’s handling of a corruption scandal said she and others had more to say about the matter, indicating more pain to come for the embattled prime minister, Justin Trudeau.

Anti-graft campaigner Zuzana Caputova could win 60.5 percent of votes in Slovakia's presidential election run-off, an opinion poll showed on Thursday, an outcome that would stand in contrast to the rise of populist, nationalist politicians across Europe.

Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear said on Thursday he had launched an investigation into allegations that pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) had overcharged state health insurance programs for drugs and discriminated against independent pharmacies.

Juventus forward Cristiano Ronaldo was fined 20,000 euros (17,387 pounds) by UEFA for a gesture he made while celebrating in their Champions League victory over Atletico Madrid last week, European football's governing body said on Thursday.

DfE figures show 260,000 penalty notices for children missing school were issued in 2017-18

The number of parents issued with penalties because of their children missing school has soared to record levels in England, after councils were emboldened by a supreme court ruling in their favour.

Figures from the Department for Education (DfE) for 2017-18 show that local authorities issued 260,000 penalty notices to parents for unauthorised absences during the state school year, an increase of 110,000 compared with the previous year.

Heart surgery and then a shoulder operation came as "a bit of a kick in the teeth" for 2016 Olympic champion rower Will Satch last year but time off the water has provided fresh focus for the hard slog towards next year's Tokyo Games.

The philosopher Mary Warnock, whose work laid the foundations for special needs education and for the regulation of fertility treatments, has died aged 94.

After an early career researching ethics and philosophy and then as a headteacher, Lady Warnock was appointed in 1974 to chair a UK inquiry on special education. Her subsequent report brought about radical change by placing priority on teaching children with special educational needs within mainstream schools, and introduced the system of “statementing” children, which provides additional support.

Rescue workers plucked more survivors from trees and roofs to safety on Thursday, a week after a cyclone ripped through southern Africa and triggered devastating floods that have killed hundreds of people and displaced hundreds of thousands.

World football body FIFA fined former Ecuadorian Football Association president Luis Chiriboga a million Swiss francs ($1.01 million) and banned him from football for life on Thursday after finding him guilty of taking bribes.

Israel said on Thursday a U.N. report critical of its use of lethal force during Palestinian protests on the Gaza border was biased and should have included a demand that the enclave's dominant Hamas group take action to stop anti-Israeli violence.

The head of the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) will face questions from lawmakers over a 100,000 euro (87,204 pounds) loan provided to the governing body, which the prime minister described as "unusual".

Year on year figure up by 25%, and firms must reimburse victims, says UK Finance

Scammers stole £1.2bn from UK bank customers in 2018, according to official data, with a near-500% leap in counterfeit cheque fraud, indicating some criminals are resorting to old-school techniques.

The headline fraud figure is up almost a quarter on 2017, when the total was £968m. There was a 50% leap, to £354m, in the amount lost to scams in which people are duped into authorising a payment to an account.

﻿New powers for councils to step in and fix privately-owned towers covered in dangerous Grenfell-style cladding are proving largely useless, leaving tens of thousands of leaseholders living in fear and facing mounting multimillion-pound bills, the Guardian has learned.

As few as one in 10 of the affected private tower blocks clad in similar ACM panels to those which spread the fire at Grenfell Tower can actually be tackled by councils, according to Manchester city council, which has been struggling to persuade the owners of 15 apartment blocks to take urgent safety action.

Indonesian investigators described the panic of pilots grappling with airspeed and altitude problems in the last moments of their doomed Lion Air flight, as comparisons mounted to a disaster in Ethiopia and authorities queued up to question Boeing.

His first guitar was made from wood and bicycle parts and his first songs were shared via Bluetooth in the desert. But the Niger musician has become international – and is taking aim at France

How do you even dream of making music when your family and religious leaders disapprove, when you live at the edge of the Sahara desert, and you cannot afford an instrument?

It helps that the Tuareg musician Mdou Moctar, from Niger, is not easily discouraged. Unable to acquire a guitar, he made one out of a piece of wood with brake wires from an old bicycle for strings, and taught himself to play in secret. “I was from a religious family and music was not welcome, but I would go and listen to local musicians and dream of being like them,” the 32-year-old singer-songwriter says over the phone while on tour in the US.

France told Iran on Thursday that European efforts to keep a nuclear deal alive did not mean Tehran had a blank cheque to violate the human rights of its citizens, after lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh received a long prison sentence.

The French president has said that if British MPs reject Theresa May's withdrawal deal next week, it will 'guide everybody to a no-deal [Brexit]'. Emmanuel Macron also said the EU and the UK could agree a technical extension if the House of Commons were to vote in favour

Ichiro Suzuki was showered with cheers and chants on Thursday night while taking his final bow in a magnificent career that lasted nearly three decades when the Seattle Mariners beat the Oakland Athletics 5-4 in Tokyo.

The 45-year-old Ichiro went 0 for 4 in the second game of the Major League Baseball season, which was being played in his home country of Japan. He got a chance at a storybook ending at the jammed Tokyo Dome when he came up with two outs, a runner on second base and a tie score in the eighth inning, but grounded out. Ichiro drew a huge ovation from fans and teammates when he was pulled from right field in the bottom of the eighth inning. The noise from the sellout crowd of 45,000 diminished after his exit.

We are an international laughing stock at the moment. But something like this has been coming for decades

The French EU minister, Nathalie Loiseau, has called her new cat Brexit. “He wakes me up every morning meowing to death because he wants to go out,” she says. “And then when I open the door he stays put, undecided, and then glares at me when I put him out.” The Dutch prime minister has compared Theresa May to the knight in Monty Python who has all his limbs lopped off and insists “It’s just a flesh wound” and calls it a draw. “She’s incredible,” says Mark Rutte. “She goes on and on. At the same time, I do not blame her but British politics.” Italian friends tell me Brexit now comes on at the end of the news, in that wacky slot just before the sport and weather.

Royal College will reflect members’ ‘very strong’ views on both sides of the debate

The Royal College of Physicians has dropped its opposition to changing the law on assisted dying and taken a neutral stance on the issue.

The college announced its switch to a position of neutrality following a poll of almost 7,000 UK hospital doctors, which found that 43.4% felt the college should oppose any change in law, with 31.6% in favour of supporting assisted dying.

Rescue workers plucked more survivors from trees and roofs to safety on Thursday, a week after a cyclone ripped through southern Africa and triggered devastating floods that have killed hundreds of people and displaced hundreds of thousands.

Brazil's former President Michel Temer was arrested on Thursday in an investigation of alleged graft in the construction of nuclear plant Angra 3, prosecutors told Reuters, rattling the political class and threatening to delay a major pension reform.

Boeing Co will mandate a previously optional cockpit warning light as part of a forthcoming software update to the 737 MAX fleet that was grounded in the wake of two fatal crashes, two officials briefed on the matter said Thursday.

Deutsche Bank on Thursday hiked its expectation of a no-deal Brexit to 20 percent - the highest level ever - from 10 percent as the third attempt to get UK parliamentary approval for the nation's exit from the European Union looms.